CT - Step 1.1: first impressions

Get an Uber, load shedding and witness the clash of two worlds

My first country to travel to in 2023 is South Africa. So the journey began in January and after a chilling time in germany it would lead into a more active lifestyle for sure.

I arrived in Capetown after a more than exhausting 12hour flight. I was very tired and looking forward to go to the place I stayed the first days and take a shower and nap. As it should be, the start of my travels wasn´t as easy going as you can hope. I took forever to verify my uber account with the new sim card I purchased directly at the airport. There are plenty of Taxi driver that offer you a ride, but it is really not recommended to take these (as I researched before). In the end it worked out and I drove to Newlands, where I had the luck to stay for a few days.

So as planned I wanted to take the shower and turned out the bathroom door shouldnt be entirely closed because it tends to get stucked. So I spent 30mins in the bathroom, thinking someone locked me in here by mistake. Sitting on the shower carpet and telling myself “my mom was right, traveling the world wasn´t the right plan for me”. Well its a more than typical thing for me to do so anyways.

I had some days there before I joined a surf and yoga camp thats a bit more far from the center of capetwon. So I wanted to use the opportunity to do some typical things that you´re supposed to do in CT. I could keep a bit of morning routine including gym for 2 days which was nice.

The two most significant things that appeared in the first days to me were “load shedding” and Uber. In SA they really have problems with the power supply. Means there are load sheds everyday f.e. 8:00 a.m - 10:00a.m, 16:00-18:00 p.m and in the night. Depends on the area you are it can happen more or less often. So most of the buildings or households have generators to provide at least for some things like Wifi. You get used to it and as I wasnt working in office or anything, it didnt affected me a lot.

And about the Uber thing; you dont walk really there as 1) things are not as close as I was used to it in european cities (or Barcelona) and 2) it is just not safe. So whenever you want to go anywhere, you will get an uber. Its quite cheap, so a 20-25min ride into the center or to seapoint is like 100 ZAR (around 5-6 EUR). Especially at night it is recommended to take an uber even it would be just some hundreds of meter. For me it is unusual that a big city has such bad public transport (coming from germany and thinking there it was bad). There is the mycity bus in Capetown thats more of a “new” thing and that is something you can use, although I never tried because I thought I will just stay some days, so Uber is okay. But there is literally NO metro/subway here so you really don`t have a lot of choices, when you have no car.

There is an impression which I think it is important to mention. There are more places in the world where this is quite noticeable, but the first time I came to that experience was in capetown.

What I am adressing is the clash of the poorest people of a population and the richest. On the way from the airport to the area where I lived for the first few days - an area with impressive houses with gardens, pools, dogs and wealth - my Uber drove past a township. Miles and miles of corrugated tin roof shacks with no organized garbage disposal, water systems or legal access to electricity. White people live in all the nice houses and employ dark-skinned cleaners, gardeners, babysitters and pool boys.

Strolling through the streets of Gardens, one is often asked for money and children ask if you can buy them some bread in the next store. In the same street one or the other Porsche drives along.

To know such things not only on a distant level of consciousness "because that's the way the world is" - but to see it everyday makes me sad and I feel somehow helpless. Helpless because one cannot help. Sure, I can buy food for a boy for 10 EUR and bring food to the homeless sitting at the crossroads. But one gets the deep desire for justice. For parable. One wonders why a person sits in the big great house and may go every evening to eat in the restaurant while a few kilometers away hundreds and thousands of families do not even know if they have enough food for their children. Who live in the garbage and dirt and not infrequently tend to criminality, simply to survive.

This problem is not only in Capetown and there is a certain awareness of it, but it certainly triggers something in you and I think that's painful but good. It is indispensable to create awareness.

Even though I have always been someone who has regularly made myself aware of HOW privileged we actually are, I become even more painfully aware of it in moments like this. Painful because no one can decide where he is born, but still more than grateful for what I have. Just by being born in Germany, I can travel wherever I want, have running water, a roof over my head, heating in the winter, a pool or lake in the summer, a school education, health insurance, government funding of various kinds and much more. For this reason, I also want to take full advantage of this privilege and give back where I can.

Accepting this truth, moreover, causes things that you sometimes think about and that seem like a problem, to suddenly seem irrelevant and trivial.

Before I went to the camp I committed to a sunrise hike to lionshead. Getting up at 4:20 a.m, starting the hike at 5 a.m. - thinking nobody is insane enough to go on a mountain at these unholy hours, finding out there were so many people even already at the top.

The hike is fun and easy with some little climbing part and in 45mins you are on the top. The luck that I have it was the only super foggy and cloudy, light rainy day. So the view was limited as you can tell. Anyways next time will do the hike for sunset to try again.